Becoming aware of how you utilise the earth’s resources and minimising waste can help you foster a deeper appreciation of and connection with the natural world.
There are so many reasons to begin minimising waste. By embracing a low-waste lifestyle, you’re taking more gentle steps on the earth, you’re saving money, you’re living with less clutter (which can reduce anxiety and overwhelm) and you’re becoming more mindful of how you utilise the earth’s resources, which allows you to cultivate a deeper appreciation of and connection with your natural environment. Arriving at a point of impactful change is a culmination of seemingly small changes that can be practically integrated into everyday life.
If you’ve just jumped on the waste-free wagon, it’s best to focus on simplifying. Matt Purbick, a keen farmer and co-author of two books,
Grown & Gathered and The Village, aspires to educate people on creating a sustainable world. The first step in minimising waste in your wife makes room for greater connection with the environment and each other is, he believes, to simplify. He says, “To be blunt, be less busy. There is no excuse anymore for continuing to run ourselves into the ground — becoming so
stressed that we are in survival mode — and then just going along with and buying the most convenient things and living in the most convenient way … Asking ourselves questions like, ‘Why am I so busy?’ is a great place to start.”
How to live with less: in the kitchen and beyond
Bestselling author Sarah Wilson is a huge advocate for creating less waste. She explains that food wastage causes more emissions than cars, and that we throw away approximately 20 per cent of the food we buy. In her book, Simplicious Flow, Sarah explains easy ways to reduce waste in the kitchen. Here are some of her tips:
See if you can put off shopping for a day of a week. See how long you can last, and use up every last scrap in your fridge and freezer instead.
Say “no” to bags and packaging when you do buy something.
Put any plastic that does pass through your kitchen to secondary use.
Start a meal from whatever is about to go off in the fridge first.
Set aside five minutes to prep and store your food smart.
Matt shares some more advice for creating less waste in the kitchen:
Start a worm farm or, if you have no backyard or other space, a bokashi bucket (a home composting system). Food scraps aren’t waste as soon as hey are being converted back into fertility for your soil.
Start to grow your own food. Some, all — whatever you can.
Shop at wholefood stores, markets and grocers, bakers and butchers, as you can bring your own bags and containers.
If you don’t know how to cook from scratch, take the time to get lessons..
These lessons can be integrated into other areas of your home and life, too. For example, we can take the bulk-buying approach into the bathroom and purchase plastic-free shampoo bars, make our own products or buy them from bulk stores. If we can’t grow our own food we can at least think about how many miles were covered from the farm to the plate, and we can begin to integrate this attitude into other purchases we make. We can also learn philosophically from the simplicity of living with less, as it can encourage us to contemplate what’s really important to us (hint — it’s probably
not material possessions!).
Matt wisely and enthusiastically muses, “I think we need to drive less. Buy less. Fly less. Every choice we make has a series of impacts, so the first step is to admit that, accept that, and integrate an awareness of the consequences into every choice we make. We will all make this planet
and our societies absolutely thrive again. We can do this!”
Words JESSICA HUMPHRIES
